“Bodhi, no!” I pull on his arm. “Don’t, don’t just leave.”
He spins around. “My mother kept me from my father, Eva! All these years! Why? None of this makes any fucking sense—”
“He tried to kidnap you, Bodhi!” my mom shouts.
Bodhi spins to face her. “He tried to do what?”
She stands and walks over to us. “He tried to take you, Bodhi. He wouldn’t let your mom leave the Bahamas. She realized how unstable he was, how she didn’t want you around that, and he threatened her. Told her she wasn’t leaving with you.”
Bodhi narrows his eyes at my mom. “How’d she get away?”
“Someone, she never told me who, someone saved you two,” my mom’s eyes fill up with tears. “Brought you guys by boat back to Flagler. Your dad, you need to understand that he’s not one of the good guys. Your mom kept him from you to keep you safe.”
Bodhi walks backwards until he’s at the patio door, and then he slouches down until his body hits the ground. He slowly looks up at my mom. “The father that tried to kidnap me, the one who threatened my mom, is now here in Flagler, following me, almost running over Eva, and breaking into your house?”
“Are you absolutely sure it was him?” my mom questions us both, fear on her face.
I nod my head.
“I need to get out of here,” Bodhi announces.
He goes to stand. His whole body is trembling as he reaches for the door handle. I can’t let him leave like this. I know how it feels to have everything around you spiral out of control. I know how it feels to be so vulnerable and lost. I grab his hands and put myself between him and the door and pull his body to mine.
“Don’t leave,” I whisper in his ear. “Don’t be alone with all of this. Let me be with you. We’ll go to my room, just us, you and me. Let me help you. Don’t shut me out, Bodhi. Please? Don’t go.”
He sighs a sigh worth a thousand words and murmurs, “Just you.” Then he turns and heads out of the kitchen and right up the stairs.
I throw myself down on a bar stool and put my head in my hands. “You knew all of this and didn’t tell him? Or me?” I say into the counter. “Mom, how could you keep this from him? He has always wondered about his dad.”
“Lenora. Lenora didn’t want him to go searching for him. Eva, he’s not a good guy.”
I glare up at her. I can tell she’s upset, distraught, maybe even embarrassed over knowing all of this. “All these goddamn secrets,” I stress to her. “You ever stop to think that maybe if everyone was honest with each other, things wouldn’t be so fucked up right now?”
I get up and head out to the patio where Coop and Beck are still running around with my brothers. “Time out!” I yell to all four of them. “Miles, Rowan, go get Coop and Beck some water really quick. They’re super thirsty, okay?” The boys run inside the house, and I then tell the guys everything my mom just told Bodhi and I.
Coop drops to the ground. “Where is he? Bodhi? Where is he?”
“My room,” I point to the balcony. “He tried to leave. I’m going to go up there and see if he’s okay.”
“You want us to come with you?” Beck asks me.
“Do you think it will help?”
“Probably not,” he answers. “Bodhi usually deals with crazy shit on his own. Then he disappears for days until we find him covered in …” he stops when he sees how alarmed my face has gotten. “Don’t let him near any booze. Don’t let him leave.”
“This is bullshit,” Coop declares. “Like every goddamn day becomes worse than the day before.”
I nod my head in agreement. “We’ve got like three hours before dinner at Calvin’s, which to be honest, I’m not sure if Bodhi will even go to now. I can get you his keys? You can drive his jeep back home? I can bring him back once things have calmed down, or you guys can stay here and we can see how shit plays out?”
“What do you want us to do?” Beck asks me. “You have a much better chance at getting through to him than Coop and I ever have.”
“Stay? I think Bodhi needs you guys. Maybe not this second, but once he leaves my room, he’s going to need his family. I might get through to him, but you guys have been his family these last three years, not me.”
“Damn, girl. You tug on the heartstrings,” Coop tells me. “We’ll stay. Hang out with your cool little bros.”
“Yeah? You don’t have to play with them. You can come inside?”
“Nah, they’re cool,” Beck chimes in.
“Thanks. I’m sure they’re loving the attention. I’ll be up there,” I point to the balcony again. “And I’ll let my mom know you guys are staying. Help yourself to anything, okay?”
“Yes ma’am,” Coop replies.
“Tell Bodhi we’re not leaving, okay?” Beck asks.
“Absolutely.” I push the patio door open as my brothers run back out with bottles of water. My mom is still standing in the kitchen. “They’re staying, Coop and Beck,” I point to them outside. “I’m going to check on Bodhi.”
“Eva,” she says quietly. “Let me know if he needs anything.”
I pause, but don’t look back. “He probably needs everyone to stop lying to him. I think that would be extremely helpful.”
I head upstairs and push my door open slowly. Bodhi’s lying on his back on my bed, his hands tucked behind his head, staring at the ceiling. He doesn’t see me standing there.
“Bodhi?” I whisper. He looks over at me and pats a spot on my bed. I close my door and join him as he pulls me into his arms.
“You are the one and only constant thing I ever need in my life,” he says to me. “Okay?”
“Okay, always,” I tell him. “Coop and Beck, they want me to tell you they’re staying. I told them everything.” I hear as he exhales. I look into his eyes and can tell he’s on the verge of tears. “They’re worried about you.”
“They’re always worried about me,” he responds. “I just want you right now. Just you.”
“Okay, just you and me.”
I’m not sure how much time passes as we lie there, just Bodhi and I. The time goes by in a blur of memories as we bring up moments from our past together. Silly little things that Lenora or the guys never thought twice about, but things that always stood out in our minds.
Sometimes we just stayed there, in silence, waiting for the next memory to pop into one of our heads. Sometimes he would kiss me after a certain memory, one that we look back on now, realizing it was a piece to our love story we didn’t know existed. We are so wrapped up in going down our own personal memory lane, we almost forget about everything that my mom said in the kitchen. Almost.
There’s a sudden light knock on my door. Bodhi’s arms are still around my body, my head is on his chest, our legs are tangled within each other, but neither one of us move anything. We just look over towards my door to see who it is.
My mom’s standing there. She doesn’t seem upset over how close our bodies are to one another, she just looks sad and worried. “We’re heading to Calvin’s early,” she says to us. “Your friends deserve a gold medal. They offered to take the boys out on Calvin’s kayaks. I’m going to help him with dinner. You guys okay?”
“We’re good,” I answer her.
“Will you be joining us? In about an hour?”
I move my eyes to Bodhi’s. I’m not answering this. It’s up to him.
“Yes,” he responds. Just a yes, nothing more.
My mom smiles a small smile. “See you both there.” Then she leaves, closing the door behind her.
“You sure you want to go over there? We don’t have to,” I say to Bodhi.
“I’m not sure what I want,” he tells me. “But Calvin, he doesn’t deserve to be ignored by me.”
I give him a kiss on his forehead and walk over to my balcony doors, flinging them open. Coop and Beck are on the patio with my brothers.
“Hey!” I shout down at them. “Miles and Rowan being nice to you?”
“Little dude
s are awesome!” Coop shouts back. “I think Beck and I might move in, if that’s alright?”
“As long as you don’t mind sharing a room with them! Bodhi and I, we’ll meet you guys at Calvin’s in just a bit, okay?”
Coop nods his head, just as my mom walks out from the patio door. Beck grabs salsa and chips from her hands as she stumbles to close the door.
“I could get used to all this help,” I hear her say, and then they all walk towards my dock.
I close the balcony doors and turn back to Bodhi. “I’m sure asking you if you’re doing okay, isn’t very helpful, right?”
He looks over at me, his beautiful brown eyes crushing me right in my soul. “She lied to me all this time. All these years of asking her about my dad, and she couldn’t just say, he’s not a good guy Bodhi, he’s not in your life because I’m protecting you. Don’t try to find him, don’t think about him anymore. Instead, she left me dreaming up this perfect father figure all these years. Thinking I was missing out on something. Do you know what that feels like? To lose that perfect person?”
“I do, a little. My mom, my dad … always seemed so perfect, until they weren’t.”
“Yeah, well, at least neither one of them tried to kidnap you, right?”
I know he’s angry. I know his pissed off words aren’t directed at me. I try not to take it personally. “No,” I reply softly. “But I know you’re aware of all the shady shit my dad has pulled over these last few years.”
He looks up at me, then walks over to where I’m standing. “I’m sorry, Eva. I’m just so pissed—”
“Don’t, don’t apologize. You’re allowed to be pissed.”
He brings my hands into his. “Do you know how lost I’d be without you right now?”
“I do,” I tell him. “As lost as I was without you.”
His hand comes up to my hair. “Babe, you keep me sane. It scares me to think of what I might have been doing this last week, if you weren’t here to keep me from feeling so broken. I’ll never be able to explain to you how much you mean to me.”
I wrap my arms around his stomach. “I’m not going anywhere, so you’ve got plenty of time to show me.”
He smiles, but his smile quickly fades. “You realize we’re being lied to again, right?”
I nod. “I do. The picture of our dads, with Owen and Mr. Channing. My mom might think your dad has never been to Flagler, but they all knew each other, and my mom doesn’t know this. She has no idea that my dad has met yours.”
“The picture, where was it taken? I always assumed it was here,” he confesses. “But if my dad has never been to Flagler before …”
I see the picture in my mind, the boat, the crystal-clear ocean in the background. The four of them smiling with fishing poles, and it hits me like a massive wave of salty ocean water.
“The Bahamas, I think it was in the Bahamas.” My eyes grow large as the realization is swept over me. “Bodhi, what if your dad didn’t disappear on a boat named Wanderlust, what if—what if you did?”
His mouth opens. I can tell he’s trying to process this as quickly as possible, and then he shakes his head in anger. “Are we ever going to find out the truth about everything?”
“We are, we will, we’re getting close. We’ll figure it all out.”
I can tell this isn’t what he wants to hear. His mouth forms a frown as he says, “But until then, we have to just sit here knowing the truth is out there somewhere. That these people know what the truth is and they’re all so wrapped up in their own little secrets, they can’t see that they each have a piece to this fucking screwed up puzzle.”
I’m not sure what to say to make him feel better, because everything he said is so true. “We can solve it,” I try to tell him. “Without their help, I promise. We’ll figure it all out.”
He’s shaking his head again. “I’m so sick of it, Eva! The lies and the secrets and not knowing what’s true and what’s not! And—and I miss her so goddamn much, but I’m so fucking pissed off at her right now! She left me, she left me with no family, to deal with all this shit without her! Shit she knew about before she left! Shit she could have told me! The money, my dad, who she really was!”
His eyes fill up with tears and he looks away from me. My heart breaks. I just want to comfort him and tell him that as horrible as it feels right now, it will eventually feel better again. I know it will, but nothing I say will help him right now, so I pull him right into my arms and just hold him there.
“Eva,” his voice cracks. “My entire life has been one big fucking lie.”
“I’ve never been a lie,” I reassure him.
“You might be the only thing,” he responds. “God, I’m so pissed at her. She knew all of this, and she left me, alone …”
I bring his face to mine. “It’s okay to be pissed off. It’s okay to miss her too. It’s okay to be angry at what she kept from you, but you are not alone. You’ve never been alone. You’ll never be alone. I won’t let you ever feel like you are.”
He shakes his head.
I kiss his neck, his cheeks, his lips, and I say right to his distraught eyes, “Don’t get lost in this anger. Don’t let it take you away from everyone who loves you and everything that matters now. It’s so hard to come back from that. God, it’s miserable and it about kills you. I can’t let it take you away like that. Like it took me away. I refuse to let it happen to you. I won’t let it happen. I refuse to lose you to this, Bodhi.”
His tears spill from his eyes as he whispers, “Never. You’ll never lose me, Eva.”
Then he’s kissing me. Kissing me like this is our last kiss ever, and he needs it to matter more than any other kiss we’ve ever shared. He’s kissing me with such intense force, my whole body is being pushed back and my legs hit my bedframe and almost buckle under the sudden impact. His hands go to my dress and he pulls it up and over my head before I even have the chance to realize what he’s doing. He’s desperate, desperate to feel something other than the sadness that has overtaken his mind. And because I understand everything he’s going through right now, I allow him to use us as his way out of falling down that dark tunnel I was once in.
His fingers are on my back, his mouth is still on mine as he frantically pulls at the strings to my bikini, the middle ones first then the tops ones on my neck. It falls to the ground without even the slightest of protests, and then my legs give out and I’m lying back on my bed. Bodhi’s on top of me, kissing every bare spot on my body that he can find. His fingers run along my breasts, causing me to grab at his neck and lift my body off the bed, welcoming everything he’s doing.
There’s this hunger deep inside of me that feeds off his desperate need to be distracted. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I crave this distraction, almost as much as he needs it right now.
I reach down for his shorts, fumbling to pull them off, and just as I start working them down his hips, Bodhi freezes. It’s as if he has snapped out of whatever trance he was just in and has suddenly realized what’s going on between him and I. He puts his hands on either side of me on my bed, moves his lips from mine and is hovering over my body, a look of disbelief in his eyes as he glances down at my naked chest and then my face.
“What the fuck am I doing?! Jesus Christ, Eva—”
I will not let him feel bad about this. I sit up, pushing him off of me as I do, and wrap my naked chest into him. “Don’t,” I firmly say into his ear. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” His tears are dripping down my bare back and my heart is once again breaking. “Bodhi,” I whisper. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” I say again. His arms are wrapped so tightly around my body, I’m robbed of air. I bring my face to his. “Bodhi, I’m not angry.”
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I wasn’t thinking. I needed to not think about everything anymore, and you, it’s like I attacked you.”
I smile a little smile and give him a kiss. “There was no attacking. I was a willing participant.” Nothing I say
is helping though.
“What the hell is wrong with me? Treating you how I used to—like I used to treat … why do I do this?” he cries out. “What the hell is wrong with me?”
I bring my hand up to his face. “Nothing, absolutely nothing. You needed a way out of the craziness for a moment. You needed to feel something different—”
“But you, Eva, you aren’t just my way out of what’s going on in life.”
“I am though, and you’re mine. We’re each other’s permanent ways out. Don’t you realize that? God, Bodhi, I love how it feels to forget about everything going on around us, and to get lost in our own little world together. I love our little world.”
“I shouldn’t have done that though. Use you like that.”
I grab his cheeks with my hand and give his face a little shake. “You didn’t do anything that I didn’t want you to do,” I make completely clear.
He smiles a little. “Okay.”
And because that hunger deep down inside of me that wants to forget about everything but being with the one person who makes everything feel so perfect, craves for more, I continue with, “And if you need me to help you get a little lost for a while …”
I take his shirt and lift it up over his body, dropping it to the ground. He tilts his head to the side and gives me a curious look. I bring his hands up to my neck, wrapping them around me, and I pull the strings to the sides of my bikini bottoms so that they’re no longer on my hips.
“Then I will gladly stumble around lost with you until we are both ready to face reality again.”
Then I pull his body back down onto mine.
chapter thirty-one
Bodhi
T here’s something almost therapeutic about lying next to the person you love, after the two of you have had sex. It almost feels like this part is just as important as the actual sex part. The few moments where you’re still wrapped up in each other’s arms, no clothes separating your bodies from one another, still hot and overheated from everything you did. It’s a beautiful, blissful moment that I never want to forget for as long as I live.
Confession Page 33